


Fire I Breathe

by RedLeaderfic



Category: Lucha Underground
Genre: Backstory, Canon Het Relationship, Episode Tag, F/M, Kayfabe Compliant, Missing Scene, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/pseuds/RedLeaderfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time an Avatar of death met a man who couldn't die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire I Breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



> Hope you're having a great reveals day!

She doesn’t remember what her name once was. She doesn’t think it was always Catrina. La Catrina, she has a dull memory of that name growing on her like moss. Perhaps someone called that once. One of the superstitious old men she passes at night tuning chipped guitars in open doorways perhaps, the ones who always stare after her, who mutter under their breath and avoid her eyes. It’s different from how the young men stare. The old ones always sense the truth. Perhaps it was one of them who first called her La Catrina and crossed himself as she walked by.

Sometimes she tries on another name like a stolen dress. She watches a group of little girls dawdle on their way to church and rolls their names around in her mouth, trying to see if any fit. _Maria, Anita, Mirella_. None cling the way Catrina has and she watches the girls disappear around a corner, nodding when one looks back at her over one shoulder before hurrying away. The little ones can sense the truth too.

That sense of _before_ keeps her restless, makes the years carve like knives as they pass by. She watches young boys age into old men in what seems like the time it takes her to blink while she stands still, time turning into a wall between her and them. 

She’s learned to find distractions. A boy in Mexico City who called to her from a bed of rubble is the newest one, a very special boy. Perhaps this one will even be more than a distraction. Catrina doesn’t let him forget his name even though he’s desperate to, using it like a cudgel when he fails because it creates anew the moment when death squeezed his throat and then let go. She doesn’t know how yet, but she knows the boy will be how she can regain what she lost. 

She doesn’t know why she cares so much. The girl she was _before_ is an abstract idea but it grinds like a pebble in her shoe. It’s like being hungry for a meal she had so long ago it all tastes like air in her memory but she still needs it. She’s starving. She’s been starving for almost two hundred years.

Catrina so looks forward to the day when she never again needs something.

***  
The bar is too small to hold the ring. Cheap wood paneled walls force the patrons to crowd close, the clothesline strung around the ring like a suggestion of a barricade isn't even an arm’s length away from the apron. The crowd is already drunk and rowdy; Catrina rolls her eyes when one tries to hit on her and before long he shuffles away and goes back to throwing trash in the ring with the rest of the crowd.

She’s not sure what brought her here. A premonition. The last time she’d felt this shiver there’d been a roof collapse and she can’t help hoping tonight that would repeat. It would certainly improve the view.

The matches are largely uninspiring, rookies and old men trying to keep the attention of an increasingly distracted crowd. She’s stopped paying attention by the second to last match when that familiar wave of premonition touches her and she looks up just in time to see the buckle on the top rope snap. Catrina moves to edge of her chair, anticipation sending a rare flush of warmth through her. The match is between an old gringo and a young man in a green mask; when the ring fails the masked man loses his footing and tumbles headfirst toward the concrete floor.

This is it. This is the death that called her name. 

Then there’s a moment. A ripple in the air Catrina knows only she can see, a scent like a struck match burning, and when the masked man hits the ground he rolls with the impact and regains his feet in one fluid, impossible movement, a faint aura of flames surrounding him for an instant. Catrina looks at the crowd knows she’s the only one who saw that, too. 

The match is over seconds later, the masked man victorious. Catrina lingers at the bar for a few minutes while they try to repair the ring, then slips out the back door and into the alley behind the building.

When the masked man looks up at her she knows he’s been waiting for her. “You saw that, didn’t you.” There’s excitement in his voice. Recklessness. “You did. I saw your face.”

She circles around him, her heels clicking on the cracked alley pavement. “Who are you?”

He smiles. “Fénix.”

“Or course you are.” The smile falters for an instant, as if he realizes that’s not as clever as he’s hoped. It’s hard both to stand next to him and to pull away. He has his own gravity. “How did you do that?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I never do. It just happens.” He takes a step toward her and Catrina doesn’t know why she takes a step back. “Who are you? How did you see it?”

Catrina trails one hand down his arm, fascinated by the heat that pulses up her fingertips. He feels like fire wrapped in skin, like the tattoos are keeping it at bay. She hears him take a breath as her nails scrape down his skin but when he reaches for her she steps away.

It doesn’t seem like that upsets him. “Who are you?” he asks again, his eyes bright and hungry. 

Catrina doesn’t answer, turning her back on him and leaving him in the dark. 

The tips of her fingers burn for hours.

Two weeks later Fénix finds her at the abandoned church she and Mil have colonized. She sighs, leaves Mil to his meditations and steps outside to deal with this. “How did you find me?”

She’s never seen a man more satisfied with himself. “I asked all over about the beautiful woman no one else wants to find.” He gives the church a look over. “Cozy. _Catrina_.” He makes a point of rolling the r to draw the name out. “Is that really your name?”

“It’s as real as ‘Fénix.’ What do you want?”

He grins. “I’m fighting again at the end of the week. I want you to come watch me.” He steps close and this time it’s easier to not step away. She moves to kiss her and she lets him, in the moment idly curious what would happen. 

The first rush of fire scorches through her veins, pulsing through her like a heartbeat. She feels him gasp like it’s happening far away, his knees almost buckling for an instant before he presses closer, his hands tangling in her hair. When he finally pulls back his eyes are dazed, his skin paler than when they’d started. “Come watch me,” he whispers into her ear, breathing so hard it’s like he’s fought a long match already. 

She says “We’ll see” and his smile lights up, his fingertips lingering on her waist as he finally pulls back. She shakes for a long time after he leaves; she crosses her arms over her chest and tries to hold in that heat. She realizes she can feel the warmth of the sun for the first time in almost two hundred years and tries to make each second last.

It fades. She knew it would fade. When the last touch fades she slips back inside, stepping behind Mil. “Who was that?”

That’s a more hostile tone than she cares for from him. “Someone who might be useful someday.”

He grunts in response and turns back to the candles; she’s not sure he fully believes her but he’s been taught not to question. She doesn’t think she’d have answers anyway.

***  
There’s a moment when in the middle of his corkscrew dive when the floor is rushing up toward his face and Fénix knows that if he misjudges things by a fraction of a second he’s going to splatter himself all over the floor. It will happen someday. Hell, it’s almost happened a few times already.

Being with Catrina feels like that all the time. 

Fénix knows he’s being used. Sometimes she talks about her plans, spinning stories about gods and immortality. He tries not to think about how it’s never his name in those plans. He can change that. What she’s planning with Mil won’t work, she’ll see that soon. She’ll trust that he’s the one who can give her what she needs, she doesn’t have to look to anyone else. 

He likes how flushed she is when she’s lying in his bed, her eyes half-closed in afterglow. Twice he’s seen her smile.

He fights better when she’s watching. He takes more risks, has more of an edge. Or maybe it’s more the way she unnerves his opponents, the way they keep trying to pick her out in the crowd giving him openings. Whatever the reason, it works. They work. He wins his match and the next day when she leaves at sunset he asks if she’ll be at the next one. “We’ll see,” she says, the way she always does.

But when the match begins she’s not there. She’s not at the next five, either.

Fénix goes back to the church where he first found her but the building is quiet and deserted, like only ghosts had lived there. 

He looks in other churches, other places but there’s no sign. When he asks no one knows anything about the beautiful woman who makes the air chill when she looks at you.

It’s years before he starts hearing new rumors, not of Catrina but of a Temple, a place where things that shouldn’t happen do, where men and things that only look like men fight. By now the fire in Fénix has grown low and angry, something simmering deep down. The rumors say this Temple is a cursed place, that no one who walks in can walk out the same person.

Fénix hopes that's true.  
***  
It is true. The Temple must be cursed, because the moment he and Catrina are alone he's back in that alley in Mexico all over again.  
***  
Catrina feels the ring call to her. She's expected it to, Fénix has always been overconfident to a fault and it's caught up with him. The feeling will fade soon, it always does with him. She closes her eyes and waits for scent of a struck match burning, the phantom crackle of flames.

But it doesn't come. The urge to go to the ring throbs in her veins like a pulse, building by the second. She squeezes her power stone until the pain is almost enough to drown out her racing thoughts. This isn't how Fénix's matches go. 

Well, so be it. He's been nothing but a thorn in she and Mil's side since they found each other again in this Temple.

Her mouth is dry. She catches herself drumming her nails against the stone as the room constricts to the overwhelming urge to witness the destruction happening so close to her. 

Less than a minute now. Only a few seconds until that fire is quenched forever.

Only seconds.  
***  
He can’t get Matanza off of him. Fénix thinks he heard the three count but he can’t hear well enough to be sure. It doesn’t matter if he did or not, when Dario is at ringside it’s his call when the match ends and Dario he can hear, screaming orders at his brother. Fénix thinks he hears _Kill him_ just before Matanza punches him again, snapping his head to the side. He can’t get his hands up to protect his face and Matanza keeps punching him until Fénix tastes blood. He can’t let himself pass out. It’s the only defense he has, if his eyes close one more time he knows they won’t open again. 

Matanza starts choking him and Fénix feels his vision gray around the edges. There were half a dozen times in the past five minutes when the fire should have come but there’s nothing, it’s not working. Nothing’s working. 

The next two minutes go by very fast. He hears something, a voice and Fénix drops on his face. Matanza tries to pick him up by his mask but in the end drops him again, letting Fénix finally roll out of the ring. After a few dazed seconds he he sees Mil Muertes in the ring and Fénix pulls himself back in, forgetting for an instant who it is he’s fighting. There’s nothing but blind instinct right now, he knows that if Mil is within arm’s reach of him he had better brace for the fight.

But Mil doesn’t touch him. Fénix looks up and sees Catrina standing tall at the top of the Temple steps, the stone she uses to control Mil held high. He can’t remember ever seeing Catrina so pleased with herself. She makes eye contact with him for a moment before gesturing for Mil to come away.

Late that night, long after everyone else has left the Temple the lights flicker for a moment and he hears the sound of heels clicking down the hallway. “Catrina,” he says, his voice a dry rasp. The hallway goes silent. “I know you’re there. You made sure I knew you were there.” Pain lances through his lower back when he tries to stand. “Ca---”

The lights flicker again and Catrina is there in front of him, looking him over with an appraising eye. “You look terrible.”

Fénix nods. When he tries to stand again his legs almost shake out from under him; she backs him against the wall and holds him there. She’s always been much stronger than she looks. “Why did you send in Mil? Why did you stop Matanza?”

“It was a good opening. Cueto didn’t expect it.” She steps closer when his legs almost buckle again. “I’m not picking you up if you fall.” Fénix pulls her back into a kiss, moaning when that’s enough to drown the pain. After a few seconds he feels blessedly numb, the memory of the match floating away. He whimpers when she breaks the kiss, pain creeping back immediately. “You’re too weak,” she murmurs, staying close enough for him to feel her borrowed body heat. “You’re too weak, stop.” 

He doesn't want to. But he never wants to. “What is he?”

“Exactly what Cueto thinks he is. A god.” Her lips curl up when she says that, her eyes shining with excitement he can't ever remember seeing before.

Fénix feels more dread now that he did when Matanza was actually trying to murder him. “Don’t send Mil after him. I’ve fought Mil, he can’t win against that.”

“Mil Muertes is none of your concern.” He tries to argue some more but Catrina silences him with one finger across his lips. “Matanza didn’t do anything permanent to you. You just need rest.”

Fénix blinks and they’re standing in front of his bed in the room he’s rented to stay close to the Temple. “Why did you stop him?” he says again, clinging to her to keep himself upright.

This time she hesitates for an instant before answering. “The day you finally meet death it will be because of me, not anyone else,” she says into his ear. “Not even a god gets that.” This time she kisses him, more carefully than he’s seen her do anything. “Sleep now.”

The comforting numbness returns and this time Fénix sinks all the way beneath it, holding onto her wrist until the last moment.

When he wakes up the next morning the room still smells like grave dirt and her perfume.  
***  
Fénix waits in the Temple for hours after Graver Consequences. It probably means nothing that Catrina disappeared from her coffin. She does that. She’s never explained how she does it but he knows it’s not a sign of anything. It’s just a match. People have been having coffin matches for decades. ( _then why hasn’t anyone seen Konnan since the one last year? Where do people GO after these things?_ )

He’s angry at himself for sitting there so long waiting for the click of her heels in the hallway. He’s so tired of waiting for Catrina. 

Fénix opens the door to his room and shuts his eyes tight. It’s a childish instinct and he’s instantly ashamed of himself. He opens them again and even in the dim light he can see Catrina stretched out on his bed, the only sound in the room her rapid, pained breathing. He wants to feel satisfaction at seeing her brought low, that he’d been right about what would happen if she challenged Matanza. He has every right to feel that way, he knows. How dare she come to him for sanctuary, after everything. He tries to touch the anger he’d been nursing since before he ever saw her again at the temple but the relief that washes through him is so strong he can’t move for a few seconds. He’s a little ashamed of that, too.

He closes the door and Catrina’s head turns toward the sound. He wonders if she even knows where she is.

Fénix crosses the little room and kneels one leg on the edge of the bed; she doesn’t look injured but Grave Consequences isn’t a match that only leaves scars someone can see. She knows he’s here now and is watching him, her eyes hooded and wary. Anxious. Fénix knows that if someone has asked him a few months ago what he would feel if he knew Catrina could ever be afraid of what he might do he would have insisted he’d be delighted.

She’s still clutching her stone tight in one hand and Fénix gently pries it away, placing it on the ancient nightstand where she’ll be able to see it. He kisses her empty palm and she sighs, her head leaning back against his pillow as he leans over her.

She stays for four days. It’s just long enough to let him trick himself that this will be the time she doesn’t disappear from his bed.

But this time she leaves her stone behind when she goes. She’d been toying with it most of that last day and Fénix knows that should have been a sign, the way her expression darkened every time she touched it. There’s been no sign of Mil Muertes since Graver Consequences and at least this time it’s clear she’s as in the dark as anyone. Fénix wanted to argue with her that last day, trail his fingers down her back as they came up with new plans together.

He didn't, though. It’s been a very long time since he was naïve enough for that.

The stone is warm to the touch. Fénix catches himself balancing it in one palm some nights, debating with himself what to do. Throw it out the window, preferably. Drop it in a dumpster early one morning and watch as it’s crushed with the rest of the trash.

Catrina may not know what happened after Graver Consequences, but she also hasn’t returned to the Temple. Fénix has. Which means he knows exactly how much King Cuerno likes to talk.

It’s a full moon the night he makes up his mind. “I know where Mil Muertes is,” he whispers to the stone. He repeats all the bragging Cuerno’s been doing, then places it back on the nightstand.

When he wakes in the morning the stone is gone and the room smells like grave dirt and perfume.

***  
Fénix always takes losing poorly. Catrina finds him moping in the back locker room after the number one contender’s match and it’s all she can do not to roll her eyes at how pitiful he looks. “You wouldn’t have beaten Matanza anyway. You shouldn’t take this so hard.”

Fénix’s eyes have grown hard over the years. “Why didn’t you stay to watch?”

“My business there was over.” He takes that poorly, too. She circles him for a few seconds. “Why did you go out of your way to bring Mil Muertes back?”

Fénix shakes his head. “Bringing _Mil_ back had nothing to do with anything.”

He takes a breath when she when she scrapes her nails across the nape of his neck. “You helped me make him stronger,” she admits. “Even I never thought he could achieve this.”

“Yeah, I noticed the change.”

“Find someone new to go to war with. Leave Matanza Cueto and the title to us.”

He’s quiet for long enough for the silence to become a third presence in the room watching them both. “When this falls apart you know where I’ll be.”

“It won’t.”

Fénix closes his eyes. “When it does.”

She crouches in front of him, tipping his chin up look at her. Catrina takes the time to trace one finger along his lips and the borders of his mask. “We’ll see.”


End file.
